Toto

Ignoring the self published without advanced degrees, Steve Mason examined the question extensively and concluded that there was no way to reconstruct the original passage.

Ken Olson wrote a PhD thesis on this question, and concluded that Eusebius was the author of the passage.

I haven't done a survey, but Mason's logic seems irrefutable: once you have concluded that there is forgery in the passage, there is no way to be sure how it originally read.

This isn't a vote. Can you give reasons for thinking that the original version of what Josephus wrote can be reconstructed?

blastula

There is too much doubt with the TF to make much use of it. For me, I have a lot of doubt just from how the TF awkwardly fits in with the preceding and following paragraphs, and how Origen didn't mention it when he mentioned JtB from the same chapter.

It seems it was inserted there just because the preceding paragraph mentions Pilate.

Juststeve

Toto:

You will find a good argument for partial authenticity of the TF here:

www.bede.org.uk/josephus.htm The author also counts your Steve Mason among those who thinks Josephus mentioned Jesus in the authentic original. Do you disagree?

You are right that it isn't a vote but fringers in general discount the role of expertise in resolving issues within the scope of the experts expertise. I don't. Does it matter at all to you that the vast majority of recognized experts think Josephus mentioned Jesus although reasonable people can disagree about exactly what he said.

Steve

P.S.

Please don't demand that I list all of the scholars in the world. Only an idiot would do that.

S.

dog-on

Here's the problem Steve, it really doesn't matter if Josephus and/or Tacitus are authentic. They are late as well as being hearsay. In other words, once again, without knowing Mark's intent, you have nada...

ApostateAbe

I have not read Olson's article. I have debated the issue many over times in this forum, and I have investigated the hypothesis, so yes. The reason it comes off as preposterous is because the apologist Origen, writing 100 years before Eusebius, explicitly cites one of the two passages where Josephus mentions Jesus, the passage about "James, the brother of Jesus, called Christ," and Origin implicitly cites the Testimonium Flavianum, apparently before interpolation, in saying that Josephus believe that Jesus was "not the Christ." The modern TF claims that "He was the Christ." If anyone claims that Eusebius changed the TF from one thing to another, then it may be unlikely, but it doesn't directly contradict the evidence. But, the claim that Eusebius completely forged everything that Josephus said about Jesus, which would be necessary to keep on the table the claim of no first-century non-Christian attestation of Jesus, then of course it really makes Jesus-skeptics look like nutters. It is changing the evidence to fit the conclusion, basically, like so many other ideologues.

Juststeve

dog-on:

If it doesn't matter to you whether the reference in Tacitus and Josephus to Jesus are authentic, then you are beyond evidence, unconvincable. What is there left to discuss?

Steve

blastula

It's not changing the evidence. When people say "the evidence" it means, or should mean, the totality of the evidence, not an isolated (cherry picked) datum. There is evidence that indicates the passage was changed or invented.

Abe, you're strawmanning the argument or showing a lack of understanding of what is meant by "evidence." It's best to be sure of what you're saying before tossing out "nutters" charges.

hjalti

There we have it: Ken Olson looks like a nutter.

spin

Impressive. Though more impressive is the following claiming to have investigated the hypothesis without having read Olson...

Can you provide an exact citation where Origen quotes the James reference found in Josephus, "the brother of Jesus called christ, James by name"? And where does Origen implicitly refer to the TF? Perhaps that might help to give the impression that you have investigated the material in a substantial manner.

Apparently unbeknown to you, the TF was regarded among religious studies folk as wholly a forgery at the start of the 20th c. Check Schuerer as a status quo example. I suppose in your puerile rhetoric you'd call those scholars "nutters". What we have seen in the 20th c. is a partial reclamation of the TF on apologetic lines. The analogy I've made here for this arbitrary reclamation is to a piece of bread and butter which fell and landed face down in fly specks. The owner then picks it up and removes the visible fly specks and gives the piece of bread to their child. The current approach to the TF is unaccountably ad hoc and you have the temerity to say skeptics look like nutters. Well, really, thanks for that.

blastula

The obvious irony is that the original apologists screwed themselves and later apologists by being such dirty cheaters and thereby making so many artifacts questionable.